Prayer for the Day

by Revd Canon David White

30th November 2025 - 1st Sunday of Advent

In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its ministers
in this season of hope which runs so quickly to fatigue
and this season of yearning which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power and come in your weakness
in any case and make all things new.    Amen.

This prayer is by the American Old Testament scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann crafts his prayers carefully and one of his colleagues has written that they offer, “hope to a church whose truth-telling voice has often been tamed and muted”.

The season of Advent, which starts today, is often described as a time to prepare for Christmas, but it is so much more. It is a complicated season when the church looks forward to celebrating Christ’s first coming as a baby at Bethlehem - which we know about and are clear as to what happened, by also looking forward to his second coming - which is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. And then there are the other Advent themes and tropes such as darkness and light, hope, waiting, longing, care for the poor, all vying for our attention. This prayer, with its inherent contradictions and sometimes unusual syntax catches our mood and feelings so that ultimately all we can do is offer everything, including ourselves to God, who will, we hope, ‘in any case…make all things new’.